Use AI on tax memos and audit work. Without exposing client data.
A private knowledge workspace for your tax memos, audit workpapers, engagement files, and client correspondence. Indexing stays local on your Mac. Cloud AI requests route through a zero-retention proxy, and common personal information is redacted on-device before it leaves.
No credit card required · GPT-5, Claude & Gemini · Offline via Ollama
When your work involves
This isn't the kind of data you casually paste into ChatGPT.
But without AI, you read every page line by line.
The private AI tool for accountants
Most "ai for accountants" tools automate bookkeeping. Elephas works the document side: tax memos, workpapers, advisory notes. Indexing stays local and identifiers are redacted on-device before any cloud call.
Draft tax memos without sending returns to OpenAI
Drop source returns, prior memos, and code excerpts into an engagement Super Brain. Smart Redaction strips client names, EINs, and account numbers before the cloud call. Answers cite the paragraph from your own file.
Audit prep, workpaper review, and engagement research
Load prior workpapers, the trial balance, and significant contracts. Ask for risk areas, unusual transactions, and items that moved materially year-over-year. Search hundreds of pages with grounded citations.
Not another bookkeeping bot
Karbon AI, Botkeeper, and Vic.ai own the bookkeeping side. Elephas works on the document side of engagements, with controls that fit how client data is supposed to be handled. Use both if the workflow demands it.
How Elephas works with your engagements
Indexing stays on your Mac. Redaction runs on-device. You choose whether inference happens locally, through the zero-retention proxy, or on your firm's own API keys.
Drop your engagement files into a Super Brain
Create a Super Brain per client or engagement. Add returns, workpapers, board minutes, advisory notes, and correspondence. Indexed entirely on your Mac.
Elephas indexes locally and redacts on-device
Common personal information, EINs, account numbers, and other structured identifiers are replaced with placeholder tokens before anything reaches a cloud model. Your full documents stay on your device.
Pick the mode that fits the engagement
Run offline for high-sensitivity work, use cloud AI through the zero-retention proxy for general drafting and research, or bring your firm's own API key to take the proxy out of the data path entirely.
Three ways to run AI. You pick the mode for the task.
Indexing is always local. Inference is your choice, per Super Brain.
Local model on your Mac
Use a local model via Ollama. Both indexing and inference stay on your device. Nothing leaves your Mac.
When to use it
High-sensitivity returns, audit engagements with restricted data, or any work where your engagement policy requires zero external exposure.
Default cloud mode
Requests route through an Elephas reverse proxy to providers configured with zero data retention. Providers do not log, store, or train on the content. Smart Redaction anonymizes common personal information on-device before the request is sent.
When to use it
Drafting memos, summarization, advisory research, and analysis where redaction-first processing fits the task.
Your firm's AI account
Connect your firm's OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google API key. Requests go straight from your Mac to the provider with no intermediary. Retention follows the policy on your own account.
When to use it
Firms with existing enterprise terms, or accountants who want to remove the Elephas proxy from the data path entirely.
Smart Redaction
Protection before processing, for client work
When you use cloud AI, Smart Redaction scans outgoing queries and retrieved passages on your Mac and replaces common personal information with placeholder tokens before anything reaches the provider.
Coverage is strongest when sensitive details are common personal information or structured identifiers with clear patterns or labels. It is designed to reduce exposure, not to guarantee complete detection. For maximum control, pair it with offline mode.
Read the full coverage and caveatsWhat's covered for tax, audit, and advisory work
- Client names, contacts, and addresses
- SSNs, EINs, and other tax identifiers
- Bank and brokerage account numbers when labeled
- Engagement and matter references with clear labels
- Links to private portals and practice-management systems
Honest note: pattern matching catches common, structured identifiers. It does not guarantee every sensitive sentence in free-form narrative will be redacted. For the most sensitive engagements, run offline.
What it looks like in practice
Four workflows accountants run in Elephas every week.
Draft a tax memo grounded in the actual engagement file
Load the relevant returns, prior memos, and code excerpts into a Super Brain. Elephas drafts with paragraph-level citations back to your own files. Client identifiers are redacted before the cloud call.
Summarize 400 pages of workpapers for partner review
Ask for risk areas, unusual transactions, and items that changed materially year-over-year. Elephas pulls from the workpapers you loaded and cites the page.
Find the right clause across a contract stack
Ask in plain English: "Which agreement contains the change-of-control clause?" Elephas searches the local index and cites the page and paragraph.
Pull obligations, renewal dates, and triggers across an engagement
Load the executed agreements into a Super Brain. Ask for a structured obligations table, renewal dates, and termination triggers across all of them at once.
Elephas vs Karbon AI, Botkeeper, and ChatGPT
Document AI for accounting work, side by side with the bookkeeping-automation tools you might already use.
| Elephas | Karbon AI | Botkeeper | ChatGPT (consumer) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary focus | Document drafting, review, research | Practice management and email triage | Bookkeeping and transaction coding | General-purpose chat |
| Mac-native app | Yes | Web | Web | Web and desktop |
| Redacts client data before sending to cloud LLM | Yes, on-device | N/A | N/A | No |
| Works fully offline with a local model | Yes | No | No | No |
| Bring your own OpenAI or Anthropic key | Yes | No | No | N/A |
| Solo and small-firm pricing | Yes | Per-seat from mid-market | Mid-market and up | Yes |
Comparison reflects published feature sets as of 2026. Bookkeeping automation and document AI solve different problems. You can run both.
Not another chatbot
Generic AI tools were built for open prompts on the open web. Your engagements are neither.
Generic AI chat
- × Consumer prompts may be used to train future models.
- × No ground truth. The model invents a citation and you have to catch it.
- × Cannot see your engagement files. You paste in excerpts and hope for the best.
Elephas
- Default cloud requests route to providers with zero data retention. No training on your content.
- Answers cite the paragraph from your own engagement file, so you can verify in one click.
- Indexed locally. Elephas works against your workpapers without uploading them.
Questions accountants ask before they install
Straight answers, with links to the underlying docs.
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Consumer ChatGPT may use your inputs to improve future models, and that is a problem when the input contains client financial data. Elephas routes cloud requests through a zero-retention proxy and runs Smart Redaction on your Mac first, so common personal information and structured identifiers are replaced with placeholder tokens before anything reaches OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google. For the most sensitive engagements, run a local model and nothing leaves the device.
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No. Your workpapers and the search index live on your Mac. Elephas does not store your document content, search index, or chat history on its own servers. When you use cloud AI, only the question text and the short excerpts needed to answer it are sent. Your full documents stay on your device.
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Elephas gives you three controls that map to confidentiality obligations: indexing stays on your Mac, Smart Redaction anonymizes common personal information on-device before any cloud call, and you can run a local model entirely offline. Elephas is not certified for AICPA SOC compliance today. If your firm needs to evaluate this for regulated engagements, email support@elephas.app and we will walk through the data flow with you.
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Different category. Karbon AI and Botkeeper automate bookkeeping, transaction coding, and practice management. Elephas works on the document side: drafting tax memos, summarizing audit workpapers, researching guidance, and reviewing client correspondence. You can run both.
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No. Elephas does not train any models on your data. Cloud requests through the Elephas proxy only go to providers with zero data retention enabled, so providers do not log, store, or train on your question or the passages sent with it.
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Yes. Bring Your Own Key sends requests directly from your Mac to the provider using your own API account, so retention follows the policy on that account. This removes the Elephas proxy from the data path entirely. Configure it in Settings under AI Provider.
Sensitive work deserves a better default
Use AI on tax memos and audit work with more control and less exposure
Local-first indexing, on-device redaction, and a zero-retention proxy by default. Pick the mode that fits the engagement.
Doing formal vendor diligence for your firm? Contact us.